Key questions remain unanswered by PSL on Celtic-Royal sale deal

While the Premier Soccer League (PSL) attempted to clear the air on its approval of the sale of Bloemfontein Celtic to Royal AM in its press conference on Tuesday, some key question marks remain.

PSL chairman Irvin Khoza stressed it took the league’s executive committee (exco) three days – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – to approve the deal, which has also seen Royal’s GladAfrica Championship (NFD) status sold to Tshakhuma Tsha Madzivhandila's (TTM) owner Lawrence Mulaudzi.

PSL legal head Michael Murphy said he could promise “that all the decisions made come after an exhaustive analysis of all the facts”.

However there are several question marks that, at least partly due to the televised format of the briefing, meaning journalists had to send questions via WhatsApp, remain unresolved.

One of those questions at least was asked. Royal, owned by Durban businesswoman Shauwn Mkhize, have a disciplinary committee (DC) sentence pending on Saturday, having been found guilty on all charges for their four playoffs matches they did not honour. Many were expecting a recommendation to go to the PSL’s Board of Governors (BoG) to consider an expulsion.

This came in the midst of a protracted legal battle to overturn an arbitration award of three points to Sekhukhune United and be reinstated NFD champions, where Royal even applied for PSL acting CEO Mato Madlala to be held in contempt of court and jailed.

Mulaudzi still allegedly owes some players money from his deal to purchase the franchise of Bidvest Wits (which he rebranded to TTM), where in January he resold within eight months after running into financial problems. The TTM owner reportedly even had problems paying players when his team previously campaigned in the NFD.

Khoza was asked how the exco overlooked such problems for both clubs, and if the league was not concerned with damaging its product by approving a sale to teams with such glaring issues hanging over them.

Murphy answered the question.

“The PSL executive committee certainly took it [Royal’s DC] into account,” Murphy said.

“The clause I read out [earlier] comes from the warranties and agreements given that in those matters the responsibility will remain with the club.

“So I don’t want to comment on image [for the league] and so on. The chairman spoke about the context.

“Sometimes we all know what we would like to see, and we might think that this looks bad or that looks bad. The reality is there was a particular context in which this decision was taken.

“The DC is proceeding, a sanction will be arrived at and the consequences will follow. So that’s precisely what we did by ensuring that we put these provisions in the agreement.

“If there are debts owing to players by TTM, that’s a slightly different issue. But similarly, there, in every transaction, what we tried to do was to make sure that with player claims, or participant claims, their rights are protected.”

While responsibility will be passed from Royal’s DC sentence to TTM, if the DC were to take the drastic action of recommending an expulsion to the BoG, where the BoG might previously have found reason to expel Royal, they now surely would not after the sale to TTM.

So, apart from the concern over the precedent set of approving a sale to a club that has flagrantly refused to attend four official matches just weeks ago, there is a question on whether the sale of a club still involved in a DC matter can influence the ultimate outcome of that disciplinary issue.

Also perhaps problematic, was that in the documentation the PSL names Nozipho Fortunate Ngubo, Mkhize’s sister, as “the acquirer” of Celtic on behalf of Royal.

This was apparently to circumvent a ruling in the NSL Handbook, which directs that a person who has had an interest in a club may not buy another team within a year. However Article 14.4 clearly states that such a person may not acquire that interest “directly or indirectly”, if they have “directly or indirectly” held an interest in another club.

The PSL has yet to answer the question on how Mkhize’s sister was not indirectly involved in Royal AM, or how Mkhize is not indirectly acquiring Celtic when it is Royal AM purchasing the Free State club.